Imprisoned
by AbyssalAuthor
Summary: Post GM Taylor wakes up controlling a dungeon. Based off I woke up as a dungeon, now what by aku-dono
1. Chapter 1

**Imprisoned**

This is basically a rewrite of I Woke Up As a Dungeon, Now What? by Aku-Dono, which is a great and amazing fic. I have my own ideas that I want to write, so I'm doing them. Go check out that other fic, it's much better written than mine :D

Chapter 1.1 -

The last thing I could remember was being shot by Contessa, in the back of my head.

My first thought was that I couldn't feel any bugs.

My second thought was that maybe there was an afterlife, and the fact that I seemed to be a little sphere of mist was some solid evidence. But I'd never believed in a god, or an afterlife, and I wasn't going to start now. Even though now might be a great time to start.

I told myself to shut the fuck up, and drifted around my surroundings. It seemed to be a square room made of hard packed dirt, with a hallway off to the side. The room had some wooden supports, but they looked more decorative than practical. To me the most interesting part was a blue white flame burning out of an shallow bronze dish, with runes marked on the pedestal it stood on. It didn't look like any language I knew of, but the meaning of the runes popped into my mind. "The dungeon of Taylor." I continued checking out my surroundings, but that seemed to be most of it.

I definitely couldn't feel any bugs within my range, and it was unlikely that there were no bugs within half a mile, so I probably had lost my power. Great.

There was a single sputtering torch, but I could see daylight from down the hall. I instinctively tried to walk towards the hall, moving non-existent limbs. To my surprise it did actually move me, even though I was floating up near the ceiling, or at least that's where I thought I was. "_I'm going to keep an open mind, and not just assume I know everything,_" I told myself. I paused as a thought occurred to me. I tried speaking, to no effect. "_Shit, I hope I'm not some parahuman ghost now. Hate those things._" I almost managed to laugh in my head.

I slowly floated down into the hallway which turned out to be about 30 yards long, and now I could see that the light was coming from a marble staircase, leading up the surface.

There didn't seem to be anything stopping me from just leaving, so I floated to the surface only to halt at the sight of a dry desert stretching out as far as I could see. If I just panicked and left, I'd never find my way back. And I was a little creeped out by the fact that I was apparently in a dungeon with my name. I really hoped I was in a coma, hallucinating, but I wasn't going to sit back and do nothing.

I floated back inside and up to the blue flame. I felt a strange draw towards it, so I gave in and brushed up against it. I was half expecting to be burned instantly, but instead I was sucked into the flame. For a second all I could see was white, and then suddenly I could see everything inside the room, the hallway, and the staircase. I had some sort of HUD, listing options and other things. I was already suspicious that I was in some sort of game, but the HUD with a prominent blinking notification for a tutorial really proved it. I'd never been into them that much, but I had liked them. Maybe this would be fun.

Then I realized the difference between my current situation and a normal game. I had no way of knowing if I actually was in a game, or this was just real life with some bullshit tinkertech, and if I actually had to survive. So I had to treat it like it was real life.

Maybe it would be more fun than preparing for Scion's betrayal.

I'd read the tutorial, which hadn't taken long since it contained didly/squat information. More than a little annoying, but I was used to being dropped into the deep end.

All it told me was that I was a dungeon, my goal was to expand, and if my flame ever went out, I'd die. It also told me that there were people who'd come into my dungeon, and kill my minions, and take my loot. It gave me a short warning about letting them take too much, but I was wondering why I'd let them take any at all.

I found a tab for the settings, which I wanted to mess with. The settings included changing the color of my flame, which I didn't mess with, and customizing my HUD. The customization options consisted of one check box. "Immersion". It was checked off, so I checked it. Immediately all the menus and boxes went away, but I could feel them still inside my head. That was when I realized that the HUD didn't give me jack shit either, so I was basically boned if any adventurers found me.

I had a strange feeling of a pool of energy, and if I focused on it, I could find out how full it was exactly. It was at 10/10. I could tell that every day I'd get another 5 energy, and that I'd get more each day as I expanded.

Building a hallway cost 2 energy, building a room cost 5 energy, though bigger ones cost more. The hallways could be any size at all, as long as an average sized human being could theoretically fit, and the hall wasn't super tall or wide.

There were other things I could place down in rooms, and only rooms.

I wanted to protect myself, so I created a hallway about 50 feet long, but in a curvy pattern with no direct line of sight. Thank Scion I didn't have to build stuff on a simple grid. I could totally cheese these mechanics.  
As the dirt on the wall I had willed the hallway to be on started to disappear, I suddenly knew that if I had a minion that could dig, the cost would decrease by half, rounded up. I cancelled the creation of the hallway, and the dirt started filling back in.

I had 2 minions I could spawn currently. A large rodent like a capybara, or a large ant.  
I knew they could both dig equally well, but I knew which one I'd choose. They both cost 1 energy to spawn, and each one decreased the daily amount of energy I gained. I could spend 1 energy on an ant, 1 energy on a hallway, and then 3 energy on the room. That would leave me with the 5 energy required to move my flame to a different location.

I spawned an ant, and to my surprise, I could actually control it like I had been able to control normal ants. But I could also tell that it was semi intelligent, like a pet. I quickly released control on it, and then requeued the building of the hallway. It started removing the dirt with its claws, and then dumping it outside. It was slow, but the same speed as doing it with just energy. I soon got bored enough that I took control of the ant, and optimized its movement and efficiency. I hadn't really thought about how long it would take to excavate 50 feet of tunnel, but it was soon going to be morning, and I didn't want to waste any energy if I could. I spawned a second ant and formed a relay with it, speeding up the digging considerably. At the halfway point, I could feel the cost of the hallway drain out of my energy pool, leaving me at 7 energy, with 3 energy per day. I could tell this whole process was going to be a grind. As the sun rose above the horizon I felt my energy pool fill with 4 more units of energy, since I'd gotten past the halfway point of the second room, so I was now at 8 energy. I decided to see what exactly I was allowed to do, and how much I could cheese and cheat. You aren't trying hard enough if you don't do both, after all.

After some experimentation, I realized that I could make hallways with the floor just below the ceiling, which would allow people to get through, but it would be awkward, and they would be easy to ambush. I wish I'd done that with my first hallway, but I knew I'd be moving my fire deeping as I expanded.

When the second room finished, I moved the pedestal with my fire into the other room, costing 5 energy. I was down to 2 energy now, so I could make two more hallways, or I could make something else. I'd unlocked traps upon completing the second room, and I could buy a pit trap for 2 energy.

I queued up one on the floor of the hallway, just after a fairly sharp bend, but I could tell that there would still be a ledge that a person could easily walk past.

So I cheesed it. I made the shortest possible tallest and widest hallway I could, on one side.  
I let my ants build that, and I could see that I'd just made the ledge on the side of the path disappear, as it was now the entrance to a hallway that reached the bottom of the pit trap, that was an amazing 2 feet long. Cheese strategy number one completed.  
I would've done it on the other side, but I couldn't. I guess that would be too much to ask for, but I had some ideas about how to deal with that. But I still had to wait for the next morning.

I spent the next few hours teaching my ants how to fight better. I hoped they'd still remember how to fight once I released control. They seemed intelligent enough, like a smart dog.

I set them to fight each other without dealing actual injury, and I was pleasantly surprised when they used the moves I'd taught them, just not that well. I guess I had something to fill my spare hours with, training my pet ants. Maybe even when I was busy, since I seem to have kept my ability to multitask.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 1.2

As the sun rose on my third day, I felt the surge of energy, and I knew I now had 4 energy. I stopped focusing on watching my ants practice to start cheesing it up. I started building another hallway, this one from the side of the pit trap that still had a ledge. It was only about 15 cm wide, so I made a hallway starting from almost all the way up the wall, where it couldn't be reached, and would be hard to see. I planned to make another room behind that which would hold some of my bugs, so I could knock off anyone trying to cross, and then they'd have to get out of the pit. I'd seen that one of the upgrades for the pit was to add sharp spikes to the bottom, which I would've stayed clear of in my previous life, but I didn't want anyone to be killing my ants.

They were basically smart puppies to me, and I didn't want to see them get slaughtered. And I kind of had the feeling that anyone who found the entrance would just slaughter everything, and maybe kill me too.

My ants took a break from sparring and started excavating the new hall and room, using up all the energy I had for that day.

After a couple hours, they'd excavated it all out, and I put them in that room to fight.

I had another 20 hours before I could do anything more, which sucked.

So I thought about all the CQC training I had, and then tried to figure out how an ant would use those techniques, with varying degrees of success.

After a couple hours of that, I felt my first ant level up, which I hadn't known was even something they could do. I inspected the one that had leveled up. I could sense that it was a level 2 minion now, and that the other was a level 1. Its bite was a little stronger, it was a little bigger, its shell was a little tougher, and it was a little bit more nimble. A small but noticeable improvement, and after only a day of practicing. And also they'd picked up the fighting techniques fairly fast.

The second ant leveled up half an hour later, gaining the same improvements as the other.

After the third room had been completed, I had unlocked a couple structures I had been waiting for: an energy well, and a hive room. The hive would let me create all insect minions for less, and they'd take less energy each day, by -1. That meant that my normal ants would just take half an energy, and no upkeep. I still had a limit of five minions per room, but I could still just get a shit ton of ants, have them practice and get stronger and level up. Never hurt to be prepared.

The hive cost a whopping 20 mana plus 3 energy per day, but it would already save me 2 energy per day if I didn't get any more ant minions. It was worth it as long as I had more than 3 insect minions. I only had 12 max energy, 10 from what I'd started with, and 2 from the other 2 rooms I'd made.  
But the energy wells each increased my max energy by 5, and increased the energy per day by 1. The first one would cost me 1 energy, the second would cost me 5 energy, the third would cost me 10 energy, and then the fourth would cost me 15.

The next morning, I got my 5 energy, and built the first energy well inside the ant practice room. I could feel my energy pool expanding, and also the energy well was effectively free, since it gave me the energy I would've gained from it that morning. A little weird, but nothing else made sense anyway.  
So I built the second one, ending up with two energy wells, and 1 energy left, with a total of 22 energy capacity in my energy pool.

I couldn't turn a room into a hive room if it had anything else in it, so I spent that energy on another hallway, off the side of the practice room.

I went back to teaching my ants new moves as soon as they had dug out that short tunnel, though I was running out of new moves.

After several hours they leveled up again, with a larger increase in their biting power, but no increase in their speed or anything else, but by that time I was becoming bored out of my mind, so I started teaching them how to dance. It was certainly funnier than watching them spar, and maybe it would help them with their footwork. That's what I told myself at least.

The next morning, just after I had received my much needed 7 energy, I felt people enter the grassy patch around the entrance. I spent the 5 energy to transfer my fire pedestal. I spawned another 2 ants with my remaining energy, to push the intruders into the pit trap. I hadn't upgraded it to have spikes yet, which I regretted now.

I could hear them talking, and even though I could tell they weren't speaking english, I knew what they meant. Just like I could read the runes on the pedestal.  
It was a muscular man with light armor and a sword on his back, a woman carrying a staff, and a teenager, probably being taught how to be an adventurer by the man.  
"This could be what we need!" The woman gestured angrily. "You know the village is dying, maybe a dungeon is our last hope! Do you want to throw away the lives of everyone in the village?" _Well, at least I knew that some people didn't want to kill me._

"I'm warning you that a dungeon is bad news. I personally think this would save the town, except for the fact that we'll all be enslaved if we are seen near it." They'd reached the steps, and stepped down into the dimly lit hallway. I'd removed the torches as soon as I figured out how, so they were basically in the dark.

"Damn. I haven't seen a dungeon this young figure out how to remove the torches." The man said. I was proud of myself for a second, before I realized that he had been in and survived without injury, dungeons more advanced than me. _Fuck_.

I needed to have a name for them, so I decided to call the man Bob and the woman Kate. The teen could be Jake.

Jake spoke up from behind them, "This is really cool! This is going to be so fun!"  
Bob glared at him and he subsided, but he still looked excited. "It'll only be fun if you don't get yourself killed. Maybe instead of yelling and alerting everything to our presence, you can tell me about dungeons."  
That was awfully convenient, but I did want to hear about what the other jungles are like, and what I hadn't figured out.

"Yes, sir. Um." Jake paused for a second thoughtfully. "Well, the dungeons get energy from killing animals and humans, which drives them to create traps and minions to kill people. They create loot to lure in adventurers," He continued on, but all I could hear was him saying that dungeons get energy from killing people. _Fuuuuuck_. I didn't want to kill anyone If I could help it, but I was wondering why everything had seemed so slow.

I caught Jake saying something about dungeons being sentient, but only barely, often making it easy to outsmart them. And from the threat descriptions he gave, it didn't sound like the minions of other dungeons were organized, or knew hand to hand combat. They certainly were in for a surprise then.

They reached the first, totally empty room. Bob glanced around, probably waiting for an ambush. But I knew that would just be a waste. "Alright, this is strange, follow me." Bob said. He walked purposefully towards the first hallway, and held up the torch he had.

"What the fuck is wrong with this hall?" Jake asked, staring at the sharply curving, snaking tunnel. Bob whacked him on the back. "Watch your mouth." He did acknowledge that the tunnel was weird though. "I have seen a few curved tunnels in the smarter dungeons, but this dungeon does seem to be abnormal. It's a good tactic in general, making ranged weapons worthless, and making it harder to scout for enemies." He carefully stepped into the entrance of the hall, and started walking along. I hoped that the weak torch light would not be enough for him to detect the pit, but I knew he'd probably be alert enough. Sure enough, he stopped as soon as he turned the corner, holding his arm out to stop them.

"Pitfall, no path on this side. Follow me."

The pit was a good 5 meters long, inside the 2 meter wide hall. I'd placed the ambush hallway halfway across, and as he reached the middle of the hallway, my 4 ants charged out at him, working together to pull him off the edge. I made one of the ants jump onto his head and sacrifice itself, knocking him off.

One of my level 3 ants lashed out a leg and knocked Kate off, and then when the teenager turned to run, caught his ankle and pushed him off. I knew the pit wouldn't hold them forever, but I could keep them down as they tried to get out. Especially since Bob had fallen badly and had a sprained ankle. Just that one sprain alone gave me 3 energy. He'd managed to catch Kate, so she was okay, but Jake was holding his broken right wrist in his left hand, his face ashen.  
All together, I got 8 energy from twenty seconds of action. I wanted to save that for later, if that discouraged them enough, so I didn't spend it. I positioned two ants on each end of the pit, and had them loom menacingly over the edge.


	3. Interlude 1

Interlude 1x

Birch set down Fiona, and leaned against the wall with a wince. _I really hate sprained ankles._ "Right, so that didn't go as planned."  
Fiona rolled her eyes, and set about splinting Lang's wrist. "That's the first time I've seen you be ambushed successfully." She remarked casually.  
"I really wasn't expecting that much coordination, at all. It was a very well executed trap, and now we have to climb up a vertical packed dirt wall, and defend ourselves from those ants at the same time. With a broken wrist and a sprained ankle. Damn."

He could see this dungeon surviving most attempts at killing it, once it got a good hold. He had never been in a dungeon that had injured him with basic minions. And from the look of things, this dungeon was a week old or less. He knew he could climb up the wall with a sprained ankle, but not with a sprained ankle and while having to hold a torch.  
Lang spoke quietly. "I got my wish, this was exciting."

Birch laughed, "You gotta be careful what you wish for."


End file.
